The so-called "liberal media"

[RGR]

I am starting a new thread for this since it is obviously off the topic of "Rumsfeld Poll - HIT IT!", where it started.

Journalists self-identify as Democrat at close to 90%, and as liberals at around 70% so, pray tell, which viewpoint isn't being heard?

I say again: Who is that owns the mainstream media?

And left-wing radio has been SOOOOO profitable and successful lately.

That certainly does nothing to refute the point I was making, now does it?

Stossel is more than just conservative in his economic viewpoints, he is, I understand, a rather staunch free-market Libertarian.

Actually, you're right. Good point. I haven't watched him much, but I read an excerpt from his book where he admitted that he personally benefits from socialist flood insurance policies that he opposes. So, yes, a more accurate label for Stossel is "libertarian." That certainly doesn't make him liberal or left-wing.

And what about the other eight of the nine hosts or guests described as "conservative"? Do you dispute the appropriateness of that label for them? Do you dispute that taken as a whole, these commentators and others like them (such as those on Fox) dominate the airwaves? Please be consistent with your observation about "left-wing" radio.

Since this pretty much means that he's for things like gay marriage and the legalization of drugs, please explain to me how exactly that's "conservative".

I don't know Stossel's views on those issues, but the libertarian position is about supporting the FREEDOM of consenting adults to marry whomever they want and consume whatever substances they want. As long as you do no harm to others -- express or implied ... I would call this the "original conservatism," as in, "getting government off our backs," as Republicans *say* they support ... until it comes time to cut government subsidies to THEIR preferred industries and social causes. :banghead:

You do realize that at least one indisputably conservative pundit has come out for drug legalization: William F. Buckley?

How often do you see true, educated, articulate leftists such as Noam Chomsky interviewed on TV? What you, in fact, typically get are faux "liberals" like Thomas Friedman, who are critical of the administration -- any administration -- because they're supposed to play the role of "media watchdog." But media lapdog is more like it. They share the same assumptions as most of the members here: that Bush was trying to do the right thing -- not just enrich his buddies and take utterly misguided revenge -- in Afghanistan and Iraq ... That he and his staff really believed all their constantly shifting reasons for the wars ... and that now that we're in Iraq, we have to stay -- even if a little criticism for poor planning and letting the boys and girls get out of hand is in order.

Please tell me, where ARE all the media "leftists" and "liberals"?

 

[Hkmp5sd]

Hop over to Accuracy In Media . They'd be more than happy to point out some liberal biased reporting.

 

[atek3]

Its not "liberal media", its "statist media". Its for welfare, gun control, drug prohibition, etc etc.
Any government intervention (with the exception of abortion, and wars favored by republicans) it is in favor it.

atek3

 

[rayra]

How often do you see true, educated, articulate leftists such as Noam Chomsky interviewed on TV?

LOL. If CHOMSKY is any sort of baseline for you, no wonder you (appear to) think there is no Liberal bias in Media. 95% of the media IS to the Right of that traitorous Leftist scumbag. But that certainly doesn't prove your point.



Here, try Media Research Center for some snacks.

Better yet, go read Honest Reporting for a HUGE wealth of 'proof' about media's leftward bias.

 

[Chris Rhines]

atek3 says it truly. The media is not liberal so much as pro-administration (whichever one happens to be in power at the time) and pro-state.

Think of the mainstream media as a bought-and-paid-for propaganda arm of the government, and you're on the right track. The smaller, semi-independant rags are the only places you'll get a true liberal or conservative bias.

- Chris

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

Think of the mainstream media as a bought-and-paid-for propaganda arm of the government, and you're on the right track.

Only if you include the corporate oligarchy under your definition of de facto "government." Today, it would be more accurate to say that government is a bought-and-paid-for arm of big buisness.

Whatever it is, what the media isn't is leftist. It is liberal, in a social sense for one reason. Tittilation sells.

 

[Unlucky]

That certainly does nothing to refute the point I was making, now does it?

PARADIGM SHIFT.

Your original point was that Disney carried right-wing talk show hosts, while not carrying leftists. Considering how badly left-wingers fail in the free market, with "Air America" or any of the previous abortive attempts to maintain a place on the radio airwaves as examples, WITHOUT GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES (hence NPR), why should Disney waste airtime for money losers just because of their political leanings?

I say again: Who is that owns the mainstream media?

Stockholders of companies, like me or anyone else who chooses to own stock and not rely on govt. ponzi schemes for their retirement and building wealth. Michael Eisner, chair of Disney, has given mucho dinero to Democrats, particularly Clinton. This, however, is irrelevant when you consider how those working behind the scenes on the stories set as much or more of the agenda than any top executive. Considering how these folks, when questioned by Brill"s Contents and other media industry publications, ID as left-leaning, this should answer the questions of all but the most obtuse.

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

How often do you see true, educated, articulate leftists such as Noam Chomsky interviewed on TV?

Perhaps advocacy of mass murder doesn't sell soap?

If you are holding up Noam Chomsky as an icon of leftist enlightenment then you've already conceded there's no merit to that school of thought.

Chomsky is nothing more than a dedicated communist and an apologist for genocide. He and his ilk are the enemies of freedom. He is sick minded and very badly educated.

As an academic, his theories of Linguistic Development are widely discredited if not ridiculed by his peers.

The fact that people like Chomsky exist and have a following amongst the weak minded makes me value my 2nd amendment rights all the more. If Chomsky or any of his kind were to gain power in the US the genocide against the innocent would commence here just as it has wherever his brand of leftist political thought has held sway, i.e, the USSR, Cuba, PRC, Vietnam, Cambodia, etc.

The Sick Mind of Noam Chomsky:
http://tinyurl.com/32wua

I am not sure if it's even fair to label leftist political thought by association with Chomsky. His advocacy of leftism is primarialy a desire for the genocide commonly associated with that school of political thought. Chomsky's political speech is most likely based in his deviant sexuality, i.e, a pronounced necrophilia as one would find in other "leftists" such as Mao, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc.

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

That's a laugh. David Horowitz talking about a sick mind.

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

That's a laugh. David Horowitz talking about a sick mind

Translation: "neener neener neener, Horowitz is a weiner!"

Do you have anything better than that to counter Horowitz's expose of Chomsky?

 

[Malone LaVeigh]

Expose? Name calling is not an expose. Chomsky"s articles speak for themselves. Sometimes I agree, other times I don't. But because he points out that the US had done some things in the past to get a lot of people in the world mad at us, doesn't make him the "sick mind" Horowitz claims. That article is nothing more than a lunatic rant.

 

[0007]

I see, so any one speaking with a conservative/non-leftest leaning viewpoint is a "sick mind", but Chomskyand his followers with their onesided rantings are intellegent discourse?

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

Expose? Name calling is not an expose.

I think if you would read it you'd find it extensively documents Chomsky's 40 year apologia for communist genocide.

Labeling Chomsky as "sick minded is nothing except a very accurate clinical diagnosis, not name calling.

Chomsky"s articles speak for themselves

They sure do. The sick mindedness of Chomsky's expressed preference for the genocidal communist dictatorships that slaughtered close to 300 million innocents in the past century is very apparent in his twisted rantings.

I can still recall an interview he gave on Pacifica radio where he saluted the people of Havana for their environment conciousness in raising roof top vegetable gardens. He never got around to mentioning the fact that the average Cuban family's monthly food ration lasts about 3 weeks and thus they are forced to raise their own food in that manner or starve.

The sick mind of Noam Chomsky.

 

[atek3]

Only if you include the corporate oligarchy under your definition of de facto "government." Today, it would be more accurate to say that government is a bought-and-paid-for arm of big buisness.

Malone, I'd agree that the government does by and large do the bidding of big business, which is far more 'facist' in nature than 'communist'. But speaking only of the media, under what circumstances do they defend private enterprise big or small? I usually see a bunch of numbnuts arguing for more taxes, more regulation, more blah blah blah.


atek3

but Malone, Man, I'd love it if the media aired stories like:
"ADM gives 10 million in campaign contributions...in other news...congress approves ten more years of ethanol subsidies." That would crack me up.
Instead of:
"The benevolent supporters of the common good, our congressmen, signed 10 more years of clean air promoting, small farmer helping, ethanol subsidies."

 

[Wildalaska]

As an academic, his theories of Linguistic Development are widely descrited if not ridiculed by his peers.

His idiot politics aside, I always thought Chomsky was a cunning Linguist.

WildstraightfaceAlaska

 

[Cool Hand Luke 22:36]

His idiot politics aside, I always thought Chomsky was a cunning Linguist.

I guess that's why they refer to him as "Dr. Tounge" up at MIT.

 

[Chris Rhines]

I've read some of Chomsky's work; he's a superficial hack. Same with Horwitz, although Horwitz is somewhat more shrill.

Chomsky is indeed, an apologist for genocide. On the other hand, has anyone asked Horwitz what his ideal plan for Iraq would be?

I'm surprised that they're not best buddies...

- Chris

 

[RGR]

Thanks for the references

A serious thank you for the references to some websites that document left/liberal media bias. I had heard of AIM, but not the others. I will check them out and get back to you.

FWIW, I find AIM long on rhetoric and short on facts and numbers. You will almost always be able to find a few examples to support any point of view whatsoever, but categorizing and counting is what it takes to really prove anything -- as well as it can ever be proven. That's always still in the eye of the beholder, but at least you can distinguish degrees of rationality in the basis of your belief.

 

[foghornl]

RGR:

My experiences in over 20 years as a Broadcast Engineer in 4 different TV stations (1975-1996)

Engineering & Operations groups generally tended to be mid-stream to Very Conservative, while the News & Management groups were almost always slightly left to way left of Hilary Clinton.

Soooo, guess which viewpoint is most often presented?

 

[fix]

The media is not liberal so much as pro-administration (whichever one happens to be in power at the time) and pro-state.

Yeah, the media is sooooooooo supportive of the Bush administration.

 

[M1911Owner]

As an academic, his theories of Linguistic Development are widely descrited if not ridiculed by his peers.

To give him his due, decades before I heard anything about his politics, I was aware of Noam Chomsky because his work underpins all the theory of computer languages. As I recall, "Chomsky Type III Grammers" have the property that they can be unambiguously parsed. This gave rise to BNF grammers and the systematic generation of lexical analyzers and parsers for computer languages. Far from being "widely discredited," his work was fundamental to the early development of computer systems. (Which says nothing about whether his grammers had any relevance in the area that he intended to be studying, which was human linguistics.)

But, that was 40 or 50 years ago...

We now return to mystified explications about his present inexplicible defense of tyrannical and murderous political systems and regimes.

 

[dischord]

I say again: Who is that owns the mainstream media?

The proper way to judge media bias is to evaluate the stories.

Ownership might or might not be the source of a bias, but it is not itself evidence of bias (logical flaw: guilt by association).

 

[HBK]

I don't know about you guys, but I can't stand socialism and communism. They lead to murder and genocide and Chomsky is an advocate of both.

 

[Yowza]

Don't really know or care about Chomsky, but I'll weigh in on the media bias issue. Okay, so I remember reading an article in my local newspaper a while back in the business section about Smith & Wesson introducing the .500 and how the company was making a comeback, blah, blah, blah. Nothing in the article implied how the gun would be marketed, what it would likely be used for, etc. It was basically about a once-proud American company being back on solid footing type of thing.

The article closed with a quote from some idiot from VPC saying something to the effect of police officers being killed in droves by this new fearsome weapon. No equal time quotes from anyone at the NRA, or S&W, or any other pro-freedom source. That is a bias (most would consider leftist), and since then I have seen it so many times I certainly can't count them all. At the end of just about every report about a shooting (the bad kind and the good kind), you get that crap. And that's just on one issue.

Who cares about the conservative talk-show hosts. They're not claiming to be unbiased, just truthful. Of course that might be a lie, but at least you know where you stand with them. If you don't like what they say, don't listen to them. But objective reporting on a story that has no relation to politics is no place for all that other stuff to creep in. And it does, far too often.

Rick

 

[7.62FullMetalJacket]

There is a huge difference between talk radio and editorials and the news media. The news media works under the assumption that they are "reporting" the facts. Most newspapers, radio, and television news are not the presentation of facts, but opinion pieces.

The easiest articles to evaluate are any that involve guns, gun control, or shootings. They will put on a VPC/Brady spokes hack spinning the world on his index finger and then put on Bubba from the local gun store as a rebuttal, or no rebuttal at all.

Usual cast of characters: ABCNBCCBSCNNMSNBC, anything from Tribune Media, LA Times, NY Times, Wash Post, Newsweek, Time, media of record all.